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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28613721">divine and damned</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/princegrantaire/pseuds/princegrantaire'>princegrantaire</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>DCU (Comics), Justice Society of America (Comics), Spectre (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Drabble, Emotionally Repressed, Fellas Is It Gay To Enter Another Man's Soul?, Gen, Grumpy Old Men, Introspection, The Spectre (1992)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 09:20:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>785</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28613721</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/princegrantaire/pseuds/princegrantaire</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>I’m sorry I forgot you in a hotel room in Roswell when the sun died</i>, Jim wants to say. Has been meaning to, for a while now. Apologies don’t come easy, clumsy foreign little things on his tongue, like he’s trying to wrap his head around a whole other language. Kane wouldn’t appreciate it, at any rate. He’s a detective and Jim knows the type through an intimate knowledge of himself -- the fact that it happened is always gonna outclass the why.</p><p>(Jim's grown used to the routine he and Nate Kane have fallen into. He contemplates it.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jim Corrigan &amp; Nate Kane</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>divine and damned</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>HELLO i don't think a single person has ever read ostrander/mandrake's the spectre (1992) but i just finished it a few days ago and it's up there with the best thing i've read in my life so the thought of this whole thing wouldn't leave my mind. won't make sense without reading that first so! go forth! enjoy a masterpiece!</p><p>takes place towards the end of the series, namely issue #52 and right at the beginning of the "the haunting of jim corrigan" arc when he's still spending nights in nate's soul</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>No one is all one thing or another. We are all some mixture of divine and damned. If I accept the darkness, I must acknowledge the light.</em>
  </p>
  <p>- John Ostrander, <em>The Spectre</em> (1992)</p>
  <p> </p>
</blockquote><hr/><p> </p><p>Jim never did like playing pretend as a kid, a step too close to lies or delusions and a step too close to his father’s belt. He’s grown into it. Sitting there on Nate Kane’s sofa-bed with the drone of late night TV in the background and a beer he can neither taste nor smell in hand, it’s hard to believe he’s done anything but.</p><p>The taste of beer, among other things, remains little beyond a last vestige of an eighty year old memory but Jim does remember how the warmth of Kane’s leg pressed against his under the covers <em>should </em>feel and he remembers, too, that he’s never once been this close to a man before.</p><p><em>I’m sorry I forgot you in a hotel room in Roswell when the sun died</em>, Jim wants to say. Has been meaning to, for a while now. Apologies don’t come easy, clumsy foreign little things on his tongue, like he’s trying to wrap his head around a whole other language. Kane wouldn’t appreciate it, at any rate. He’s a detective and Jim knows the type through an intimate knowledge of himself -- the fact that it happened is always gonna outclass the why.</p><p>But Kane had let him into his soul, still does. Nightly. He’d let Spectre lick his wounds for weeks on end and when Jim had thought to emerge, when he’d been able to, he’d found himself here. The apartment on the wrong side of the tracks with the broken windowpane and the dinner table that doubles as a nightstand. It’s pitiful, worse than the room Corrigan had rented back in ‘35 to go with a promotion that hadn’t meant nearly as much loose cash as he’d imagined.</p><p>Kane makes him feel human. It’s a dangerous train of thought.</p><p>And it’s a feat neither Percival nor Waylon way back when had managed.</p><p>Thing is-- Jim hates the forgetting. If he lingers, if he sinks down into Kane again tonight and feels rested like never before in the morning, he might forget the water and the cement. He might forget he’s only pretending and the reminder will be painful because it always is, because he’s a bastard who couldn’t ever take it lying down so he’s forced to see his end over and over. There’s not much else that still stings.</p><p>Jim doesn’t realise Kane’s got a hand on his arm ‘till he looks, perplexed by the gesture that won’t register and quite uncomprehending of the reality that it’s <em>on </em>and not <em>through</em>. Sometimes, whatever he’s made of -- ghost goop, ectoplasm, whatchamacallit -- solidifies, offers a resemblance of unfeeling flesh.</p><p>“Something on your mind, Corrigan?” Kane asks, muffled around a cigarette. Nasty habit, smoking in bed. “C’mon, I know it ain’t Spectre bothering you ‘cause you ain’t got that bloodhound look about you.”</p><p>At that, Jim snorts. “You’ve got shit beer,” he says and wonders immediately whether Kane’s likely to buy it.</p><p>If he’s not, then at least he’s willing to let it go.</p><p>“Yer lucky I’m sharing,” Kane says and goes right back to his cigarette.</p><p>And doesn’t that hurt just as bad? Jim can’t smoke anymore, he’s tried it a number of times bordering on double digits, tried it until he’d ended up hopeless and frustrated and feeling damn childish. No lungs, no breath, nothing to draw in the smoke. He can’t blow out candles either, as much as a Spectre-induced gust of wind had been sufficient to satisfy Madame Xanadu’s clients during the rare séance he’s been invited to.</p><p>At times like this, close to Kane but lost somewhere between life and afterlife, Jim tries hard not to think of his father’s sermons. He’s not one of-- <em>them</em>. He misses Clarice and he misses the weight of her in his lap and he wishes desperately he’d known Amy’s touch. It’s not like Nate Kane’s up there but they’re cut from the same cloth, Jim knows, and there’s that recognition that bothers him, the domesticity that’s bloomed around them. Kane waits up for him, they go to bed together and dream the same dreams. Jim doesn’t know what to make of it, Spectre doesn’t either. It softens him up in ways no man should.</p><p>“You turning in soon?” he finds himself asking.</p><p>Kane makes a vague noise, thinks on it. “Yeah, lemme just finish this episode,” he decides, points to the TV playing something with an atrocious laugh track.</p><p>“Alright.”</p><p>Maybe he’s not meant to question this one thing, maybe it’s enough to have it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>find me @ufonaut on tumblr!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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